Essay writing tips?

[RancidPunx]

Righto. I've been away from education nearly for ten years. I recently went back to college and was given an assignment to write an essay.

 

Does anybody have any practical tips on how to plan, format or construct an essay?

 

I spent 3 hours just typing aimlessly and am left with a bunch of rambling text that doesn't really say anything.

 

 

Any tips are gratefully received.

[LariatTom]

It sounds really fucking stupid, but when I was in my first year at uni doing what I thought at the time was a pointless module designed solely to make sure SH German students had the full amount of credits, we had a seminar on essay writing. Turns out that module was far from a waste of time and actually contained loads of useful stuff.

 

The tutor told us that she planned essays using an "Essay Fish". The idea being that your essay should take the structure (though not literally) of a fish...heck, if you're feeling adventurous, draw a fish out. Split the fish into three sections (head and tail being similarly sized and the body being larger) to make up the three main parts of your essay and you've got the head, the body and the tail.

 

At the head, you've got the beginning to outline your ideas and state where you want the essay to go, raising points of discussion and 'unpacking the question' as well as creating a hook to guide through the rest of the essay. In the body, flesh out your ideas with logical arguments/statements and if possible, make them all flow instead of jumping around from idea to idea with no/little continuity and then at the tail, take all of the ideas in the body and try to build a conclusion around them.

 

I can't remember the exact elements of it, but that was pretty much how it went and I imagine if you had a look on Google, you'd probably find something about this style of structure.

 

EDIT: This explains it relatively well, and has a dodgy Spanish/Mexican sounding fish.

 

It sounds stupid, but it turned out to be really handy and saved me a few times last year.

[Mike Castle]

Righto. I've been away from education nearly for ten years. I recently went back to college and was given an assignment to write an essay.

 

Does anybody have any practical tips on how to plan, format or construct an essay?

 

I spent 3 hours just typing aimlessly and am left with a bunch of rambling text that doesn't really say anything.

 

 

Any tips are gratefully received.

If you're doing an Access course you'll find you can ask your personal tutor for direct help, and you should have Study Skills lessons and assignments to help with essay producing. Unfortunately these will come about 2 months into the course because doing it early would be too easy.

[Chris B]

Best quick tip I ever got was to look back at the title of the essay after you write each paragraph. If it doesn't have anything to do with it, you've rambled off-topic.

[rockbus]

when it comes to your introduction, body, and conclusion, think of those three sections as "tell them what you're going to say, say it, tell them what you said." you are essentially repeating the same thing three times for different reasons.

 

And there's no such thing as too much planning. I always go through at least four phases. Random notes, then a paragraph by paragraph plan of what I'm going to say built from those notes. Then a first draft, sometimes handwritten, sometimes typed, depending if I'm in uni or not at the time, then a final version. Sounds time consuming but the final draft will be so much quicker than just random typing.

[patiirc]

One of the weirdest but best tips I got from a tutor was to write the conclusion first. Then you know where you will end up what to discuss and can remained focus on achieving your end result. I did an essay once that was pretty much the longest conclusion I'd ever written, all 2500 words of it and that scored me a first for that bit of work.

 

Basically dont start at the start and it can make things easier to do and stop wandering

[Up Chuck]

Give yourself time to read it through. By which I mean about a day. I hardly ever manage to do so, and I've suffered a bit for it at every level of education.

[niff]

when it comes to your introduction, body, and conclusion, think of those three sections as "tell them what you're going to say, say it, tell them what you said." you are essentially repeating the same thing three times for different reasons.

 

This would be my rule of thumb but if the subject of the essay is something like social sciences you'd be best introducing the statement, then in the main section detailing each theory and their relevance along with a conclusion briefly going over which is most plausible. Don't forget your references also, so make a note of each quote/source don't want to be done for plagurism now!

[CavemanLynn]

LariatTom's system looks about spot-on for a basic structure - get your opening and conclusion right early and the body will fall together much more logically, I've found.

 

I got into the mode of 'essay-speak' pretty easily at uni, so I could basically spit-ball for two- to three-thousand words and it would only need neatening up, insertion of citations/quotes, etc, and it would be finished. I used to bang out all my essays in the reading week, lol, then just review every time we were introduced to more concepts to se if anything could be added or rearranged.

 

One skill I did build up was skim-reading for quotations, which were a big deal on my course (Film&TV, i.e. bullshit degree). I'd always find a quotation or two to back up my point (and maybe note another article), then a few others against it to argue against, for balance. My favourite trick was quoting a quote within an article, meaning I could get a bunch of references from one piece of reading (I can neither condone nor condemn this course of action ).

 

Make sure you leave yourself several days to read through what you've done. heck, bang out any old tripe first off so at least you have your thoughts on paper, then edit as applicable. I've found it's best to have everything in front of you than to try and chase a conclusion while exploring your ideas as you go. Just like any writing, creative or otherwise, you're never going to have the final draft done first time.